In writing a paper on the image of Asian-Americans in advertising, you use information that you found in a book and three journal articles. Since you do not quote any passages verbatim but instead summarize the information in your own words, proper documentation requires you simply to list your sources in the bibliography at the end of your paper.
In writing a paper, you use material that you found on websites. Since all information on the Web is considered to be in the public domain, you can cut and paste passages into your paper, modify them or not, and acknowledge these sources simply by noting the titles and URLs of the sites in your bibliography.
For your marketing class, you and three other students must invent a new product and then launch an imaginary company, complete with a commercial website. Having found a number of attractive graphics by using the Google image search, you proceed to place them on your “company’s” site, to be hosted on the Villanova University server, and therefore, freely visible to anyone. In doing this, your group is not violating any copyright laws, since images on the Web may be freely used by anyone.
In writing a paper for your ETH2010 class on some of the ethical considerations of cloning, you incorporate parts of a paper that you wrote a previous semester for your CHS1001 (Modern Thought) class. Since it is your own work, this is permissible and does not need to be acknowledged.
Read the following passage:
Blogs can be a venue for student contemplative thought and critical writing. Since blogs come equipped with tools so that any visitor can comment on any post, this means a student's tentative thoughts can be heard, encouraged, engaged, challenged, and commented by those around her. Students' ideas can inform the direction of the class week by week, even if they don't have the confidence to open up their mouths and explore a new idea in the classroom. This kind of social software can be used not only to encourage thoughtful and regular writing, but also to help turn a classroom into a community, to help build relationships between students as well as students and their instructors.
Mazar, Rochelle A. (2005, May 4). Faculty Blogs: Good Idea or Bad Idea? Blog entry. Retrieved June16, 2005, from http://www.mazar.ca/2005/05/page/2/
You paraphrase the above passage as follows:
Rochelle Mazar, a blog practitioner, advocates the use of blogs as a way of getting timid students to make their tentative thoughts heard, thus encouraging thoughtful and regular writing. Because this new technology allows any visitor to comment on any post, it can turn classrooms into communities and build relationships between the participants.
Is your paraphrase acceptable?